Those Who Survive
by Colon Capital D
Summary: Many inattentive guards have been stuffed into animatronic suits at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria by Freddy and his friends over the years. But this doesn't always mean an instant death sentence for some people. Mike Schmidt is one of those people.
1. The Note

Hello. My name is Mike Schmidt, and I used to work here at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria as a night guard. Now I work here as one of the many animatronics that inhabit this place. I use the word "work" loosely in this case, since I don't get paid and I can't leave. I would have left a long time ago, just gotten my paycheck as a security guard and left, but that would have been just too easy for this place to let me get away with.

First off, let me tell you that any rumors you may have heard about this place are absolutely true. Several people have gone here at night never to come back again. Both kids and adults have all fallen victim to this wretched place. But the one thing that people don't know is that the people who disappear here aren't dead, or at least not all of them are. They end up here, in the basement, among the piles of other animatronics that litter the floor, filled with the living and dead alike. Most of them are dead, from having a wire or servo or some other electronic part jammed through their head or body, but there are a few lucky, or unlucky, people who make it, whether it be from an empty suit or just pure resilience. I am one of those few people who made it. And for years I have wished that I hadn't been.

I've been here for, oh, maybe five or six years? I really can't remember. All that I know is that I've hated every second of it. Most of it is just the sheer boredom. The animatronics rotate on who gets the shift for the day, so most of my time is spent locked in the basement doing not much of anything. The only thing there really is to do down here is eat pizza, but there comes a point when you can hardly look at the stuff anymore without wanting to vomit. But the boredom is nothing compared to when it's my turn for the day as the lead 'bot. Most of the time, I can control my own actions. Sure, the suit is heavy, but I've gotten used to carrying it around all the time. But when I'm up to entertain the kids, the servos and wires and all the other mechanical stuff inside of the suit comes to life, and once that gets going, there's pretty much no way of stopping it. I have to live out an entire day with no control over my body whatsoever, and that can get pretty hard sometimes. I haven't killed any other security guards yet, but from personal experience I know it could happen. And if it ever does, I don't think that I can be held responsible for anything I do the next day.

Now, I don't expect anyone will ever read this. I gave up hope of contact with another human outside of this restaurant long ago. But I think if someone finds this, years from now, maybe they'll be able to drag my body out of this suit and give me a proper burial. Because let's face it:

I'm going to die in here.


	2. The Door

I've decided to keep writing these notes. At least it'll be something to do for a while. The real difficulty will be finding more paper to write them on, since I'm almost out. I guess this'll be a sort of journal of my time here.

Today was my day with the kids. They laughed and played games while I just sat on the stage singing. All in all, it was a pretty normal day, or at least as normal as it can get around here. I tried to pay more attention to the things that went on in the restaurant today, since if I'm going to be writing these notes I at least need something interesting to write in them. And boy was I glad that I did! I noticed that at the end of the day, someone forgot to lock the door to the main entrance of the building! Since I'm going to be out at night anyways while my suit tries to kill the security guard, I might be able to get out of here! If I can just find a way to stay upstairs when it rolls over to 6AM, I could escape through the front door and finally be rid of this stupid restaurant! The first thing I need, however, is a plan. It's only Tuesday, so the guard in the office should probably be able to handle things. And being in a Freddy costume means that my suit probably won't move at all during the night. And that's the one detail of this whole situation that I'm counting on.

You see, when one of the animatronics doesn't move for a while, it goes into a sort of power saver mode. This power saver mode makes it so that most of the servos in the suit go inactive, except for the bare minimum required to stay standing and keep its balance. Unfortunately, any movement will "wake up" the suit again, and it will return to full functionality. That means that I'll have a few seconds to move before the suit reactivates every five minutes. And that few seconds adds up to a lot over a full night. It isn't much, but I might just be able to make it out the door in time before all the animatronics return to the basement. If I can do that, well, I don't know what'll happen. But a Freddy Fazbear suit sitting outside of the restaurant might not be able to find its way back in, since they're only programmed to move around inside of it. It's a long shot, I know, but the payoff is just too big for me to pass up this chance. I have to do this.

And I only have one shot to pull it off.


	3. The Plan

It's a little past 11:00. The restaurant is closed down for the night, and everyone has left except for a few employees cleaning up the dining area. All of the animatronics are still running though, which means that I have a little bit of time to write before I can do anything. There is a bit of room inside of the suit, and I'm using it to store what little writing materials I have (leftover receipts, mostly). I've always hated this time of night, and for good reason.

During the time between 11:00 and 12:00, there is almost **nothing** you can do. The store closes at 11:00, but all of the animatronics are kept in daytime mode until 12:00. Since they'll only move around the restaurant if they see customers, all of them just sit there on full alert waiting for something to happen. And of course nothing ever does, save for the few employees left behind to clean up in preparation for the next day. I tried calling out to them, but of course they don't hear me. They never do. I don't really blame them, since it's a bit hard to yell with a giant set of metal teeth sealing your mouth shut.

The clock on the wall says 11:30. Everyone will go home, and soon the night watchman will come for his daily dose of paranoia and frantic camera checking. The restaurant seems to have an almost endless supply of them it seems. Most of them are college students looking for any job they can find. But then there are some, like me, who thought that working at Freddy Fazbear's sounded fun, a chance to go back to their favorite place as a kid. I call them nostalgics, people who could've gotten a job somewhere else, but chose this place instead because working with all the old characters just sounded so darn fun. After their first or second night though, they discover that it's anything but "fun". A dream job this ain't, believe me. If only I had realized it soon enough.

11:45. All the employees have finished up and gone home for the day except for the night guard, who's eating some leftover pizza in the dining area. That was actually one of the main reasons why I signed up as a night guard: you got to eat whatever pizza was leftover from the day before, which was usually a lot. My first day I ate a whole entire pizza and almost threw up the next day. This guy, though, looks like he's being a bit more conservative with his eating. Two slices and a soda to wash it down. A decent amount. I've always played a game with new security guards where I try to figure out whether they're nostalgics or college students. Usually it's hard, since all I have to work with is about an hour of them milling about in the dining area while they prepare for the night. This guy, though, was the easiest one yet. He looks like he's around 18 years old maybe, and his badge identifies him as "Dave". He's got that sort of "first job" look about him, like he's never really worked in a professional setting before. Definitely a college student. He's finished with his food now and has gone down to the security office to start his shift. I don't think he's realized that he's in a life-or-death situation yet, he looks way too content for that. It's 11:58, almost time for my "daring escape" to begin. 11:59. 12:00. The clock chimes and the animatronics come to life.

Time to put my plan into action.


	4. The Guard

The plan... Didn't quite go as smoothly as I had hoped. It was close though, that's what really gets me.

I had been making good progress throughout the night too! I made it off of the stage and had gotten partway through the dining area when the power ran out around 4:30. I don't know what the deal is with these Freddy Fazbear suits, but I guess they must detect when there's no power, and for whatever reason, that means that they always just head straight for the security office. There was nothing I could do at that point, and the suit just made a beeline for the office, destroying all the progress I had painstakingly made for **four and a half hours**. Not only that, but I had to personally stuff the guard into a Bonnie costume. I really hope he's ok. He screamed the whole time until I put the mask on him, and there was nothing I could do to help. The whole thing was just awful. I think his name was Dave or something. I can't remember. Either way, he got roughed up pretty bad. Maybe by sheer luck he'll pull through, but I'm not very optimistic about it. If there's one rule this place has, it's that putting your hopes on something is a bad idea. I guess I kind of ignored that rule with my escape plan tonight.

Then again, if he makes it, then I'll have someone to at least interact with down here. That's the one thing that I haven't had over the years in my various escape attempts: a friend. Someone who can work with me towards a common goal of being free from this place forever. I suppose I am getting ahead of myself a bit. After all, all of the other guards that have fallen victim to the animatronics over the years didn't survive, so why should this on be any different? What makes him so special? Then again, what made me so special? Why was I the one that lived when everyone before me died? I know that I'm breaking my own rule yet again by saying it, but...

I really hope he makes it.


	5. The Awakening

It's 6:00AM. All the animatronics are heading back to their places in the basement now. All of them except for me. I had to plug into the circuitry of the suit that I stuffed that guard into and activate its programming. Great. As if I wasn't feeling guilty about it enough already, now I'm making him become trapped just like me. And to think I was feeling good about this day.

I don't believe it! He's still breathing inside of that thing! He's going to make it!

He's going to have quite the surprise when he wakes up, too. Not only is he going to be waking up inside of a Bonnie costume, he'll also be surrounded by other animatronics that look just like the ones who almost killed him. Along with the one who did almost kill him, me. The worst part for him will probably be the smell. I know that was the hardest part for me. I guess you get used to it after a while, but the smell of dozens of rotting corpses isn't exactly pleasant if it's your first time with it. Didn't eat at all for nearly a week when I first got here. He'll get used to it eventually, I'm sure. But hey, this is great news for me! Not so much for Dave, but for me this means I'll finally have someone down here to keep me company! And who knows, he might even have some ideas on how to get out of here.

It's been an hour now, and he still hasn't gotten up. I'm starting to get a little bit worried about him. What if he's in a coma? Or worse yet, what if he's gone totally bonkers and wakes up and goes berserk on me? I guess a crazy guy is better than nothing. Wait! I heard a groan! Groans are good, right? He's moving too! That's always a good sign. I just wish I didn't have to meet him like this though. "Hi, I just stuffed you into a suit that you're going to be stuck in for the rest of your life! Want to be friends?" Then again, it isn't like I can really say anything to him. To him I'll just be another one of the animatronics, out to kill him just like all the rest. I need him to know that I'm different, a survivor just like him. We don't really have any way of communicating with each other, and that's kind of a crucial elements of not being mistaken for a murderous death robot when you look exactly like one. The last thing I want is to get stabbed to death by a pizza cutter in a fit of pure rage. Oh well. There's only one thing left to do.

I'm going to hand over these notes that I've been writing.


	6. The Receipts

Hello. My name is David Hodall, and I used to work at Freddy Fazbear's pizza as a night guard. Now I don't know where I am.

I was going about my normal shift there - checking cameras, flicking on lights to check my doors, that sort of thing - when the power went out and I was left in total darkness. I was just about to dig out a spare flashlight from one of my bags when one of the animatronics I was guarding, the bear one, appeared in the doorway and started playing music at me. Now personally, I was relieved. I thought that the footsteps I heard a few moments earlier were from someone breaking in, requiring me to use my incredible security guard skills to go and hide under the desk. I listened to the song that the bear was playing for a bit until it stopped and started walking towards me. I didn't see this as being any cause for alarm, so I sat tight and waited to see what it was up to. I probably shouldn't have, seeing as what it did next was definitely cause for alarm. It grabbed my security tablet, raised it above its head, and then hit me in the face with it. That's when I blacked out.

I woke up some time later in... a room. That's pretty much all I know about it. There were tons of animatronics everywhere, and I could barely move because of what felt like a 50 pound weight attached to my back. When one of the bear animatronics started moving towards me, I probably would've screamed like a little girl if it weren't for the mask covering up pretty much all of my face except for my eyes and mouth that dulled it down to a low gasp. And this thing was super tight too, so I started getting all itchy, until I looked up again and saw that the bear thing was staring at me. I tried to say hi, but it was really muffled because of the suit, so it didn't really sound like anything. I tried waving after that, and that seemed to make the bear happy. At least it wasn't hitting me with expensive electronic devices paid for by the company that I'll be paying out of pocket for.

But then it did something really weird. It looked around and found a bunch of receipts that had been lying on the ground and shoved them at me. We sorta stared at each other for a while, and eventually he picked up another one and wrote "what happened?" on the back and handed it to me along with a pen. Now I'm no bear expert, but when a bear hands you a piece of paper and tells you to write a thing on something, you write the thing on the thing. Sage advice, I know. Very applicable to other areas of life. Especially if you go into dentistry, I hear. That comes up all the time in that particular field.

**But anyways**, I'm wandering a bit off topic. The bear told me to write down what happened, so here I am, writing down what happened during my shift while a weird bear thing watches me. His instructions were kind of vague, seeing as they consisted of only two words, but I figure he would have given me more than just a couple of receipts if he wanted my whole life story. There's just one question I want him to answer though:

How the heck do I take off these weights?


	7. The Article

**Local Security Guard Still Missing After Three Days!**

**Police Call Off Search!**

It has been three days since local night-watchman David Hodall failed to show up after his routine shift at a local pizza restaurant, and since then police say that they have had no substantial leads on his whereabouts since Wednesday afternoon when they began their search.

"While we are saddened that we have to call off the search to find this man, the department simply cannot afford to continue spending this amount of resources without making any progress" said police chief Miles Peterson in a press statement this morning, "the fact of the matter is that we have no idea where this guy went. These resources would be better spent somewhere they would actually make a difference."

The decision to end the search has been highly controversial, as it comes after a highly publicized community effort to track down David. Many people have been disappointed to see their efforts go to waste, and they aren't staying quiet about it either.

"The fact that the search to find David Hodall has been called off is ridiculous!**"** Said Matthew Carpenter, one of the main community organizers for the effort to convince police to continue the search, "the police department's duty is to serve and protect the citizens under its jurisdiction. By not pursuing this case, they are being woefully neglectful to not only the people, but also to their job! We need to find David at all costs, whether it takes two weeks or two years!"

However, police have showed little sign of backing down from their original decision, citing the fact that violent crimes in the area have gone up by nearly ten percent since they started their search.

"The police have a pressing need for these resources in other areas" said Peterson in response to Carpenter's announcement that he will try to continue the search without police help, "obviously, we are very glad that the search will still continue, and will accept any leads found by citizen investigators. But please try to understand that if the department continues to devote time and money to this case on the scale that it has for the past few days, we will have a severe shortage of these things for routine law enforcement. It would be better to try to prevent this sort of thing from happening again than to keep searching for a single person."

The case draws surprising parallels to several cases of other people who also disappeared shortly after starting their job as a night guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. However, Edwin Tucker, CEO of Fazbear Entertainment, denies any connection between the disappearances and his restaurant.

"The allegations of these disappearances being related to my restaurant chain are complete nonsense" said Tucker after being asked if he knew about the rumors of there being a connection between his restaurant and the disappearances, "these stories are just made up to scare people away from coming to Freddy's. Fazbear Entertainment takes no responsibility for the disappearances of any of its employees, and denies any connection to the recent disappearance of Mr. Hodall."

If anyone has any information on the whereabouts of David Hodall, you are urged to contact the local police department immediately.

* * *

><p><strong>Help Wanted<strong>

**Freddy Fazbear's Pizza**

Family pizzeria looking for security guard to work the night shift. 12 am to 6 am.

Monitor cameras, ensure safety of equipment and animatronic characters.

Not responsible for any injury/dismemberment.

$120 a week. To apply, call 1-800-FAZ-FAZBEAR


	8. The Explanation

Hello David. My name is Mike. Although I might look like just another one of the animatronics here, I am in the exact same situation you are in. You might not realize it now, but you are actually very lucky to be alive right now. Lucky to be alive, but also very, very unlucky.

Right now you are inside of one of the animatronic suits that you were trying to keep watch over last night. If you were paying attention to the guy on the phone, you would know that it's because they mistook you for an endoskeleton instead of a person. It is true that it was me in the suit, but please try to understand that I am the only friend that you have down here. I had no control over my actions at the time. If I could've done anything about it, I would have done it already. No one deserves to have this happen to them.

Since you're here, though, you should probably know that there a few things you absolutely need to know.

The first thing is that no one ever comes down here. Ever. Holding out for someone to find us down here isn't going to work. Trust me, I've been down here for years and it hasn't happened once.

The second thing you need to know is that the only thing to eat down here is pizza. Lots and lots of pizza. That might sound like a good thing at first, but trust me, after a while you'll get sick of it and start looking for other things to eat. There aren't any. And unless you can move your mouth in that thing, which judging by the fact that you haven't said anything yet you probably can't, you'll have to swallow your pizza whole. Tearing it into small pieces and washing it down with water helps a lot.

The last and most important thing to know is that unless you somehow got an empty suit to get stuffed into, there is no way to take it off. Trust me, I've tried plenty of times, and the only way to get one of these animatronic suits off is to rip it out of wherever it's stuck into, which is probably your face. Trying to take off one of these things is like trying to hold onto the back of a roller coaster using just your bare hands: it's really hard, probably won't accomplish anything, and is very likely to end up killing you. So just don't even bother trying.

That's the basic rundown of the situation. If there's anything else you want to ask me, there's no real hurry to ask it.

We're going to here together for a very long time.


	9. The Discussion

Hey Matt, I found a bunch of these short notes that look like they go together. I stapled them together so that you wouldn't have to go through the whole pile to find them all.

- C

* * *

><p>Mike, I know you said that you had tried to escape a bunch of times before, but I don't care how many times you failed. I'm getting out of here no matter what.<p>

And how do you plan on doing that?

Well, have you tried the air vent?

Yes. It's too small to fit through. It probably just leads to the furnace anyways.

I'm going to try going through it. Maybe my bunny suit is smaller than your bear costume.

* * *

><p>I told you it wouldn't work.<p>

Yeah, yeah. I know.

I already told you, unless it's something that I couldn't have come up with in five years of thinking about it, it isn't going to work. I already tried everything, and here I am! Still stuck here!

Hold on! I was reading some of your other notes, you know, the ones from before I got here, and you said something about the suits sometimes moving around at night when you were still in them?

Yeah, why?

And they were in the main part of the building, right?

Yeah, so?

Why don't you just walk out the front door?

Because the servos in the suits turn on at night and you can't do anything. I thought you said you read my notes on this stuff.

Hey, I didn't say I read all of them, I just sort of skimmed the first few. I was just wondering why you couldn't use the most obvious escape route ever.

It wouldn't work even if you could move around in them. The front door gets locked every day when the night guard comes in.

What about the door to the basement?

What about it?

Have you tried picking the lock on the basement door?

I can't. The door is locked with an electronic number lock, and it only opens when the animatronics rotate for the next day. The lock on the basement door is the one thing in this restaurant that isn't a run-down piece of junk.

Can you tell which animatronics will rotate for a certain day?

Yes. It's determined by how recently you've been out.

So, by who was out the longest time ago?

Yes.

Do you know when I'll be out?

You're up in 4 days, kid. The suit you're in goes 9 days after mine.

Then before I go out to perform for the kids, you get a rope or something and tie it to my leg and the door handle. Then when the door closes I'll trip and break the electronics!

It's a nice idea, but it won't work. The electronics in these things are built to survive a bomb going off. You'd probably just give yourself a concussion.

What if I used that trick that you used before with the sleep mode?

In a Bonnie suit? Yeah right. Those things are always the first to go for the security guard after midnight.

No, I mean what if I used it during the day? If I ripped up the suit a bunch, they would have to take it into the backstage area for repairs or else people would get freaked out. And if it was sitting backstage for a while waiting to be repaired, wouldn't that be enough to activate the sleep mode?

Yeah. You wouldn't get far though, they'd just put you back in the room if you got out into the dining area.

I wouldn't need to. I could just unlock the door to the basement. Then when everybody leaves and there's no one left to move the animatronics back but the night guard, you could come out of the basement and unlock the front door with the key in the manager's desk.

That would only work if we knew the code to the lock. I don't know what it is, and I doubt you do either.

It's "72414".

What?! How do you know that?

It was on a Post-It note in the office. I'm pretty sure it's for the basement door.

Ok, fine. You can try unlocking the door with a random number you found on a sticky note in your office. I'll be right here waiting for the door to open.

And then you'll be getting out of here. I promise.


	10. The Game

Only three more days until David puts his "brilliant plan" into action. If it works, I'll be out of here, hopefully forever. And he'll only have to endure a week or two of this place before getting out. The only problem is that I'm really not expecting it to work at all. I just don't see the mechanics as being dumb enough to not notice that the animatronic they were repairing changed position, let alone moved to the other side of the room! And even if he did make it to the door, the code that he found would have to actually be the one for the door, and not for the safe or something.

I'll be honest though, even if The Plan doesn't work, it's still been nice to have another person here with me. We've been playing a kind of connect four on the back of pizza boxes to pass the time, where he uses a red pen and I use a pencil to represent the pieces. I've won every game we've played so far. He's terrible at it, and I doubt he's ever played a game of connect four before in his life, but at least it's something to do. After the twentieth win in a row it started to get a little pathetic, but he kept saying he needed just "one more game" to beat me. On the fiftieth or so I decided to call it quits and go to sleep for the night.

This morning David woke me up holding a pizza box with a connect four grid on it. He shoved a piece of paper in my face saying that he finally figured out a way to beat me and that he "needed" to try it out right now. I was a little annoyed at having been woken up early, but I decided to give it a shot anyways. Turns out that he had changed his strategy to revolve around making as many pairs of his spaces as possible. Unfortunately for him, he didn't pay any attention at all to mine, and ended up losing again. He stared at it for a bit and then just walked away. I decided to go back to sleep.

When I woke up he wanted to play another game right away. He wanted to try out another "amazing strategy" on me. This time he spent the whole game trying to block me from winning. If worked for a while, until I managed to get two split three-in-a-rows. Just another tally for my victory count, I guess.

I really need to find another game to play.


	11. The Complication

Just three more days until Mike and I get out of here forever! I can't wait to get away from here, this place is like a prison. The funny thing is, the worst part about it hasn't been swallowing my food whole, or not being able to talk. It's been the mask. Have you ever had a really bad cold, and you try to breathe out of your nose, but you can't because it's so clogged up? It's like that, but it's way worse. The first thing I do when I get this whole suit off is going to be to go to a pine forest and take a deep breath in. I don't care how far out of the city I have to drive, I'm going to go to one and just savor the smell. It's going to be amazing.

In the meantime though, Mike found an old pen and pencil and showed me how to play connect-four today. We've been playing on the back of a stack of pizza boxes by drawing a grid and filling in the spaces where we want to go. He's won a few games, and I've lost a few games, but some of them have been really close. I'm sure to beat him soon, I just need to figure out a way to catch him by surprise, use a strategy he doesn't expect. I need to come up with the weirdest strategy possible that's so unexpected that he'll have no way of countering it. I've spent hours thinking about it, but so far I haven't come up with one. I'll win eventually though, I'm not worried about that. What I am worried about though is the fact that I haven't been able to take my medication down here.

The problem is that about a year and a half ago I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. The doctor said it was a minor case, no jumping out of windows for me, but that I should still take some meds for it just to be safe. Down here though, I don't have access to any of that. I've spent a lot of my time second-guessing myself about whether or not the things I'm seeing are real. I know it's probably nothing, but every few days I've been hearing whispers. They always sound like they're coming from far away in the distance, and they always say the same two words: "it's me". I still haven't told Mike about it yet, but I'm going to need to tell him soon.

He needs to know that it's been happening more often. This morning when I woke up I saw a Freddy Fazbear suit in the corner that wasn't there when I went to bed. The thing is that this one looked... different. Instead of the normal ones that sit up straight because of the metal endoskeleton inside of them, this one just sat there limp, like a dead body. And the only eyes it had were two white dots that just stared at me, unblinking, as if it was waiting for me to make a move so that it could start running at me. I walked over to Mike and got him up to see if he saw it too, but when I looked back it was gone. I grabbed a pizza box and acted like I wanted to play connect-four again, and he seemed to believe me. I'm getting sick of this place. I want my medication. I want my pine forest.

I want to go home.


	12. The Suspicion

Two more days. Two more days for something catastrophic to happen and ruin everything that David has planned. Speaking of David, I think this place is really starting to get to him. I caught him twice today just sort of staring off into space. I tapped him on the shoulder the first time and he seemed to snap out of it. But the second time I had to practically push him over before he even seemed to realize I was there.

I'm getting a little worried about him. You know how the only thing he seemed to want to do yesterday was play connect four? Well, I figured he would want to do the same thing today too, especially seeing how exited he was to play it this morning. So I sat down with him, set up a game, and made the first move. He just stared at it for a while, like he didn't know what it meant, and then finally made a move in the middle of the board, in a spot where you aren't supposed to go unless someone has a piece underneath it. I told him that it was an illegal move, but all he did about it was get up and walk away.

He came back a few minutes later and asked if I saw something in the corner of the room. I looked over and there was nothing but a few boxes of pizza and receipts to go with them. I asked if that was what he meant, but he just said "no" and never brought it up again. **Then **he wanted to play connect four again.

I have to admit though, he's been getting better at it every time. These past few games he's gotten to a point where he's almost won, but only lost because of some quick misdirection on my part. We even got our first tie game today, where the board got completely filled up without a single four in a row. He might even have a chance to beat me soon! I don't think he'll ever catch up to me in terms of games won though, seeing as I have around a 70 game lead. Still, I might lose my title of "Undefeated Connect Four Champion of the Basement" soon. Doesn't mean much, but hey, it's something. And if by some stroke of luck David's plan does work, who knows. Maybe I'll become "Connect Four Champion of the World". That would be pretty cool, to be the best in the world at something. Right now though, I can only really be the best in the basement. That's my plan for if I ever get out of here.

I want to be the best in the world at something.


	13. The Hallucinations

Thursday can't come soon enough. I've barely been cooped up in here a week and I'm already getting a little stir-crazy. I can't even begin to imagine what it's been like for Mike, who says he's been in here for five years. I'd probably lose it after a week without people. The only thing keeping me marginally sane has been my connect-four games with Mike.

The hallucinations certainly haven't helped, either. It always feels like someone is constantly watching me, an unseen observer hidden just out of sight. And the voices. Oh, the voices. They've been coming every six hours or so now, and while they still sound very faint and distant, they don't sound like they're whispering anymore. They sound like they're yelling, crying out in anger at me. There's nothing I can do but sit and ignore them, hoping that they'll fade sometime soon. It can sometimes take a while before they do, though.

I saw it again today. The weirdly empty costume in the corner with the white dots for eyes. I was playing another game of connect-four with Mike, as usual, when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I turned and there it was, staring at me. I tried to look away but when I did, it would just appear in whatever other place I looked. Then it started getting closer, and closer, and closer every time I blinked, until it finally appeared right next to me and pushed me, sending me sprawling onto the floor. When I looked back it was gone.

I need to tell Mike tomorrow. If another one of these episodes happens during the escape, it might destroy everything that I've been planning for. And that might mean another month until we get another chance, and I'm not sure that I can hold out that much longer.

This plan needs to work. It's the only thing I have left, the only thing that keeps me going. If I lose this, then I lose everything. And that's why it's going to work. It's going to work because it has to.

It has to work.


	14. The Truth

David's going to try to escape tomorrow. The closer it gets, though, the less likely it's looking like it's going to work. He might need a hand with the whole thing if he's going to pull it off.

He told me about the schizophrenia today. About how he's been hearing voices, about the dead suit in the corner. Thing is, I know I've seen that suit that he described before. It sounds exactly like the thing that I saw on the forth night I was here, right down to the white dots for eyes. It left me pretty shaken up, but it never appeared again. I guess that means that we're both going crazy together, seeing things that aren't there. This place gets to all of us eventually. Just some of us more than others.

I suppose that I shouldn't even be that surprised, really. I mean, he already came to me asking about things watching him from the corner. Schizophrenia isn't much of a step up from that. I still can't get over the fact that he saw that same golden suit, though. How could it be the same one from the night that I got taken by the animatronics? It makes no sense! Unless that thing is an actual, physical animatronic I don't see how it could be the same one. But it appeared in my room even though I had the door closed, so it couldn't have been. I feel like I've known less and less about what's going on ever since David came down here. He's a good kid and all, but he can be pretty confusing sometimes.

I lost my title of connect four champion to him today, too. And to the weirdest strategy. He would mirror all of my moves until I started to catch on. Then when I decided to try and force him into a loss, he switched it up and took advantage of what was supposed to be an intentional mistake. Man, if only I could see the look on his face when he made that winning move. He had seemed so determined to beat me this entire time, and he finally did it. That seemed to cheer him up a bit, so I decided I would try and make something new for him to try beating me at, a new goal to try and reach. I chose Battleship, because that seemed like just the right combination of luck and strategy for him to really get into.

It wasn't. I don't know why, but the entire time he just seemed so bored with the whole thing, like he was only playing it to humor me. And he probably was, seeing as he beat me on the first game. He didn't really seem to care that he won at all, either, he just asked if we could play another game of connect four. To say that he likes that game a lot would be an understatement. I swear, it's like all he does is obsess over how to beat me. And now that he's finally done it, he doesn't know what to do except try and beat me some more. Oh well. You can't blame me for trying to put some diversity into his game choices.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Wow. I can't believe the amount of support I've been getting for this story, from the reviews to the messages to all the people who followed, favorited, and read my first real story ever. I know it isn't my custom to interrupt a story by putting some notes smack dab in the middle of the story like this, but I just really wanted to take some time to thank all of you. If it wasn't for you guys, I probably wouldn't have even made it this far in writing it, but now I've got a whole ending planned out and maybe even more after that. So, thank you, all of you._


	15. The Wait

One more day. Just one more day and this whole thing will be over. Someday I'll sit back, remember this, and laugh. Well, no, I probably won't, actually.

I told Mike about the hallucinations I've been having. What I didn't tell him, though, is that they've been getting worse every day. It's gotten to the point where I'll have hallucinations every hour or two. And it's probably happening even more frequently than that, I'm just not noticing it. It's getting so distracting that I sometimes have trouble remembering what the escape plan even is! I'm not worried about that, though. I have my notes that I wrote (thank goodness I did), so if I ever forget, I can just remind myself of what the plan is. The problem, though, isn't going to be remembering, it's going to be misremembering.

You remember how I said that my "episodes" were probably happening more often, but I just wasn't noticing them? That's because they all seem **so real** at the time. Like this morning, I thought that Mike was dead for nearly half an hour! It was only afterwards that I had realized that I had been imagining the whole thing. I could've sworn I had seen him get eaten by that same golden animatronic until he walked up to me and asked if I was ok!

So no, the problem isn't going to be remembering the plan. The problem is that I'm going to need to stick to it no matter what I've seen, or what I think I've seen. If the keypad is a spatula, it doesn't matter. I need to type in the same code regardless of what kitchen utensil it is. If I hear someone tell me that it's hopeless and I need to leave Mike behind, then screw you, voice in my head. I'm opening that door anyways.

On a lighter note, I finally beat Mike in a game of connect-four! I did it by pretending that I was still trying a stupid "copy everything" strategy, but I was actually looking for an opening for the whole game. Then, when he got bored and decided to try and make me mess up, I changed the strategy and turned that into **him** messing up instead. I'll bet he was so mad about it too, since he had been rubbing the whole "Connect-Four Champion" thing in my face the round before. He even tried to save face by making a new game that he could try and be the champion of, but I totally beat him at that, too! I tried to play it off as if I didn't care, but inside I was so happy about it! All that hard work of planning moves and tactics finally paid off, big time!

I'm really glad that I was able to beat him now in particular. I wanted to at least beat him once before we escape, and I was able to do it the day before we do. There isn't much to do around here now, since any other games would basically just victory laps to gloat over.

All that's left to do now is wait.


	16. The Escape

Today's the day that we escape. Mike says that the animatronics would be switching at 6:00AM, so I got up at 5:00 to be sure that I would have time to prepare for today. I spent the first half hour of that time tearing up my costume so that it gets taken in for repairs, and when I asked Mike he said it looked pretty good. I ripped a lot of the stuffing out, tore up some of the outer cloth, and tore off one of the ears. I even made a little space to put paper and pens into so that I can write notes about our progress! With all this damage done to the outside of the suit, hopefully the technicians will realize that I'm in no fit condition to perform and shut the suit down for repairs. Then I'll be outside of the basement with full control, and from there it should be a piece of delicious chocolate cake.

* * *

><p>It's around 7:00, and the plan is going smoothly so far. The employees took one look at the suit and called a technician to repair it. They brought me over to the backstage area and turned off the suit's control mechanism, so now I'm back in control of what I do. Mike was right, not being able to control your body really does suck. It just feels so wrong to not have how you move correspond to what your body does. I really hope that I never have to do this again. The only way to know for sure, though, is to check to see if the code to the door works. That's the thing that's most likely to go wrong with this plan, and I need to know if it will work or not.<p>

* * *

><p>I typed the password into the keypad, and the door unlocked! Now all I need to do is wait for the restaurant to close and Mike and I can ditch this place for good!<p>

* * *

><p>Turns out that waiting 16 hours in a small room by yourself can get a little boring. It can also make you kind of loopy, especially if you have schizophrenia to make it worse. I've been hallucinating on and off for nearly nine hours now, and I still have quite a while until the restaurant closes. Mostly it's been that gold animatronic again. He'll appear out of nowhere, stare at me for a few minutes, and then disappear like he was never even there. And I've been constantly hearing voices repeating the words "it's me" over and over again. I know I left a bottle of my medication in the security office desk, so at 10:00 I'll be able to sneak in, grab it, and then everything will be fine again. The manager will still be in his office until the guard gets here, though, so we won't be able to escape until then. The technician still hasn't shown up, I suspect that he put it off until tomorrow. I plan on being gone by then, so he shouldn't be a problem. I just need to wait until 12:00 and then give the "all clear" to Mike so that we can escape together.<p>

* * *

><p>It's 11:15 now. The restaurant has been officially closed for a while now, and the only people left are employees cleaning up for the day. I snuck into the security office at around 10:30 and got my meds. They were in the desk, right where I left them last week. A few minutes ago I went downstairs, got some water from the sink, and then took one of those glorious pills. They're on a delayed release, so I won't be able to feel the effects until after midnight. Luckily though, that's exactly when I need them. In the meantime, I need to deal with this creepy bear costume that's staring at me again. I've done all I can about it, and now I just need to wait it out.<p>

* * *

><p>It's 12:00. Everyone has left except for the new security guard. Apparently they still have no trouble finding people desperate for money. The voices are still very much there, but they've faded slightly in the past 45 minutes. I've been using them to gauge how much the medicine has taken effect. The fact that the constant shouting has been lowered to a dull roar is a good sign. I gave Mike the all clear and he came up. He looked very impressed with me. Then he handed me a note that it looked like he had written beforehand. It said "I knew you could do it" in big, bold letters. I think that's the nicest thing he's ever said to me.<p>

* * *

><p>The escape was a disaster! Or at least, I think it was. This is the one time I really hope I'm imagining things. When Mike and I opened the storage room, we started slowly making our way across the dining area. The suits are so heavy that all we could do was slowly plod along, but we were making good progress. Then I noticed something. I put out my arm to signal him to stop and pointed at the stage. Both Chica and Freddy, the two animatronics left onstage, were staring straight back at us. It made me pretty uneasy, so I asked Mike why they were doing that. He said he didn't know.<p>

Then the bear something completely unexpected. It got off the stage and started walking towards us, with a demonic laugh that I had only heard once or twice during my time as a guard, and only when it was right outside my door. I started backing away as fast as possible when I froze. The golden bear from before was standing right behind it and staring at me, but this time it seemed to be pointing. I looked over to where it was pointing and saw Mike standing there in front of the other Freddy suit, eyeing it warily.

And then it happened. The other suit reached out and before either of us could react, it grabbed his head and pulled it right off, as if it were merely removing a cork from a bottle. His spine separated with a sickening crack, and it was all over.

Mike's body fell to the floor with a thud, and the suit responsible began examining his head with intense scrutiny. When it turned the head over to the neck, it tugged on his now severed spine. Satisfied, it dropped the head on the ground next to the twisted corpse of my fellow guard.

After a few seconds of shock, I finally composed myself enough to realize that I needed to get out of there, fast. When I turned to run, however, there was that golden Freddy suit, standing right in front of me. It opened its mouth and stared at me for a few terrifying moments before appearing right in front of my face. Then it was gone again. I turned and fled to the manager's office as fast as I could, not caring about the weight of the suit on my back anymore but only the pure terror and the adrenaline coursing through my body. When I got there I slammed the door shut, locking it behind me with the frantic speed of a jackrabbit. I took a few moments to catch my breath.

When I calmed down enough to think clearly, I went to the desk on the other side of the room and opened the drawer containing the key to my salvation. I went to unlock the door to the office and paused.

There was no guarantee that what I just saw had been real, I reminded myself. It was all probably just another hallucination and meant nothing at all. This made me feel much better. Mike was probably still out there, waiting for me to come out with the key, wondering why I had locked the door on him. I realized that the voices in my head had faded to a low whisper. They got softer and softer until finally...

Silence.

That most wonderful sound that I had not heard in days was finally here, and everything became clear once more. I took some time to savor the silence, before realizing that my sanity had returned to me once more, that I could once again trust my senses to give the truth, and that I didn't have to second guess myself constantly anymore. It was a most beautiful feeling, and it felt like a weight had been removed from my entire mind. I smiled, and then realized something that desperately needed to be confirmed.

I needed to make sure that Mike was ok.


	17. The Return

The voices were gone. The voices that had plagued me for days before had finally subsided, and I could finally trust my senses once again. So, naturally, I had to double-check to make sure that what I had just seen was indeed a hallucination. You know, just to be sure and all. But the sound of silence was just so inviting that I couldn't bear to go back out into that place full of so many different noises.

So I sat in the office and relaxed. I lost track of time, but eventually I worked up the courage to leave the small office and meet back up with Mike. He was probably pretty angry with me by now, seeing as I was the only one with the key to the restaurant. But when I opened the door, he wasn't there like I had expected him to be. I figured that there was no way he would have gone back to the basement, not after we had worked so hard to get out of it, so I decided to go looking for him around the restaurant.

The first place I checked was the kitchen. After all, if I had gone five years without eating anything but pizza, I would probably go for some different food the first chance I got. But no, he wasn't there. So I walked down the east hallway, since I might as well check while I'm near it. As I got to the corner, though, a light flickered on, and the door to the security office slammed shut. No surprises there, I guess.

I dragged myself over to the other side, a little tired from both my lack of sleep and the frantic scramble that had separated us in the first place. When I got to the other hallway, though, a weird animatronic that I had never seen before ran past me towards the security office. I had no idea the animatronics could even move that fast at night! But apparently it wasn't fast enough, as when it got to the security office, the door slammed shut in its face.

I hadn't found anything down the west hallway either, so I went to check the backstage room where I had sat during the day. As I walked back down the hallway, though, I noticed that one of the posters on the wall seemed a little bit... off. Instead of the normal picture of Freddy Fazbear that usually hung in the hallway, there was now a picture of Freddy pulling his own head off. It made me nervous just looking at it, so I hurried to the backstage room that I had been heading to. When I got there, it was completely dark. I remembered where the light switch had been, though, so it was just a matter of groping around until I felt it with my hand. I flipped it on and as the dim lights slowly flickered on, I was greeted by a gruesome scene.

There was blood all over the floor and covering the counter in the center of the room. The extra suit parts that normally occupy the room were strewn about the floor haphazardly, as if someone had torn the place apart looking for something. Limbs of all different colors - most prominently red - littered the room, and a trail of blood that looked like it had been made by dragging something along the floor led down to the basement.

This couldn't be real. Surely I was still hallucinating, and Mike was still alive and well somewhere. But I knew it wasn't true. The medicine I took had had more than enough time to take effect, and the voices I had been hearing were long gone. I flipped the lights in the basement on and there he was, dead at the bottom of the stairs. As I slowly walked down the stairs to examine the body, I could've sworn I saw that golden bear out of the corner of my eye. But when I turned to look, there was nothing there.

The whole thing was just too much for me to handle. If I hadn't come up with this ridiculous escape plan, none of this would have happened. Mike was dead because **my **plan had failed. I felt like vomiting, both because of the grotesque nature of the body and because of how awful I felt about myself. But as I sat there staring, the rest of the animatronics came filing into the basement.

And the door closed behind them.


	18. The Lock

I don't know how long I sat there crying, but I must have eventually fallen asleep because I woke up to the sound of the animatronics loudly stomping over to their positions on the stage to begin the night. After they finished moving, the basement was dead silent. I took a moment to contemplate what to do next.

I was finished. The plan had failed. I was still stuck here, and now Mike was dead because of it.

But I couldn't give up now, I couldn't just leave it at that. If Mike was dead, then the world was going to know about it. Right now, if I didn't do anything about it, Mike would have spent five years down here and be remembered for none of it. So I resolved that I was going to make my escape and go straight to the police, the manager, anyone. I was going to make sure that the world would not forget his existence (or mine, for that matter). So I sat down to make a plan.

The fact that it was only me now was going to make any escape plan much harder. Mike had told me that he tried every possible escape route he could think of, and none of them worked. The only reason why we even had a chance of escaping in the first place was because we were two people, and as such could be in two places at once. Now it was just down to me, and I had to think of something that Mike hadn't.

I paced the room over and over trying to think of something, anything, that might help me get out. The air vents wouldn't work, I had already tried that. I couldn't sit around pretending to be broken again, since my rotation wouldn't be for another month, not to mention the fact that without another person to enable my suit's repair mode again at night the whole thing would be pointless. And trying to signal the night guard wouldn't work because to them, I would appear to be another animatronic trying to kill them.

I paced for hours trying to think of a way out, but to no avail. It was when I began contemplating how best to run headlong at the large metal door separating the basement from the outside world that I noticed that the handle was turned slightly upwards, whereas before it had been completely straight. When I pushed on the door, lo and behold, it opened! At this point I was extremely confused. After all, wasn't the door automatically sealed with an electronic lock every night when the animatronics rotated? It wasn't until I actually stepped through the door that I saw why the lock had failed in this way.

There was a copper wire tied from the door handle to the electronic keypad that controlled the locking mechanism, and a piece of cloth was jammed into the lock, preventing it from closing. It wasn't hard to figure out who had put them there, and it was made even more obvious by the piece of paper hung crookedly on the wire saying "good luck, kid."

So, he had known all along that the plan wouldn't work? Then why had he went along with it anyways? Or had he just put it there as a backup? It raised a lot of questions, but it answered one very important question: the way that I was going to escape. I still had the key to the main entrance from the manager's office, and now all I had to do was make a break for the main entrance. I walked over to the doorway leading out of the backstage area and paused.

If the animatronics had attacked Mike last night, then why didn't they attack me? There hadn't been another Bonnie suit out that night, and Mike was attacked by the other Freddy costume. It had probably suspected him of being a fake, since he was a duplicate of itself. There would be a new Bonnie out tonight, so I might be attacked now, too. However, the animatronics had taken some time to stare at us before making any moves in our direction. It probably took them a bit of time to identify us as not being one of them. The plan, then, was obvious. I had to just run as fast as possible through the dining area and pray that they don't notice me. I opened the door.

Then ran like I had never run before.


	19. The Blizzard

I ran.

The heavy suit felt like nothing at all as I sprinted across the dining hall. I didn't stop until I reached the main entrance area, where I came to a stop in front of the large door that was the main entrance to the restaurant. I jammed the key into the lock and quickly unlocked the door. When I looked back, I could see that Bonnie was right behind me, slowly walking towards me. I turned the handle on the door, opened it, and ran through, locking the door behind me.

I sat there on the ground, panting like a dog, for a minute before I realized what I had done. I made it! I escaped! Now I could go to the police, tell them what happened, and they could get me out of this stupid suit! Even better, once they investigated the basement, they would find Mike's body, and put a stop to all of this for good. Then I could leave for my pine forest and everything would be fine.

There was only one problem: I had no idea where the police station was. I could hardly ask someone for directions when I couldn't speak, and a giant bunny costume walking around isn't really a normal kind of thing anyways. So I decided that I would try wandering around until I found it. It's not like the town was very large, so I would find it eventually.

So I started walking. It was still early in the morning, so everything was lit by the eerie glow of a street lamp at the end of the sidewalk. I began walking towards the lamp, it was as good a direction as any to start in, after all. As I started walking towards it, however, I noticed a few white flakes begin to fall. It wasn't a problem now, but if it started to snow harder it would severely hinder my ability to walk quickly enough to get anywhere. There was nothing I could do about it, though, so I just kept walking.

As I walked, the snow began to come down harder and harder, until finally I could no longer see the street lamp that I was walking to. I wasn't cold, my suit did an excellent job of keeping me warm, but the weight of the snow kept dragging me down, preventing me from moving more than a few inches per step. My hand touched something, it felt like tree bark, so I sat down next to it to wait out the blizzard. After a while I dozed off. When I woke up, I was covered in a thin layer of snow. I brushed it off and kept walking.

I didn't get very far, though, before a police car pulled up next to me and two officers stepped out. They started yelling at me, but I couldn't hear anything they were saying since the suit covered up my ears, and eventually they handcuffed me and led me into the back of the car. It wasn't until later that I found out that someone had called to report a "suspicious person" sleeping on their front lawn. And since I couldn't say anything to the police, they brought me in for being a "public nuisance".

But hey, at least I found the police station!


	20. The Station

The police station was a small building at the edge of town. After we pulled into the tiny one-car garage to the side of the building, the two officers got out of the car and led me into the ramshackle old place that housed the town's police department. From the faded, dull wallpaper to the burnt out lightbulb above the beaten up old police cruiser, it was very clear that they didn't have very much money to work with around here. As I walked through the door leading into the police station, I saw two men arguing in what appeared to be the building's main lobby. When I was led over to the table where the two men stood, the one on the left stopped and began to stare at me.

I stared back at him, since there wasn't much else for me to do at that point, and we both just stood there staring at each other for a solid minute. Finally, the man said something to the two men holding me in a hushed tone that I couldn't make out. The next thing I knew he was trying to pull my mask off of my head. It didn't work, of course, and he eventually gave up and sat back down.

It was then that I remembered the pen and paper that I had hidden in my suit earlier. I wiggled my arms out of my sleeves and began frantically writing my message:

_ "Trapped._

_ Can't speak._

_ Need help."_

After writing it, I squeezed my arm through the suit and up to the head portion, then threw the note out of the mouth of the suit. It fluttered down to the ground in front of me, until eventually landing at my feet.

No one spoke for a few moments after that, until finally the man on the left leaned down, picked up the note, and read it out loud. The other man at the table - he looked like he was the police chief - raised his eyebrows slightly, as if he had just read an interesting fact about koalas on the back of a Snapple cap. He signaled the two officers holding me, and they left for another room to the side of the lobby.

When the two other men had left, he picked up a small letter opener from off of his desk. He slowly walked up to me, holding the letter opener like a weapon. When he was a few inches away from me he stopped, but continued to draw it closer and closer to my chest. I braced myself for him to stab me with it, too terrified to move. Then he stuck the letter opener through the outer layer of the suit, drew it closer, and...

Cut a hole through the fur of the suit, leaving me perfectly fine and extremely relieved. He motioned to the other man, and then pulled part of the uniform that I had been wearing since I had first been trapped through the hole. The man he showed it to looked shocked, and grabbed the letter opener and began widening the hole in the costume.

Eventually the whole front of the suit was cut off, removing a large part of the weight that had been weighing me down for the past week and a half. It was an amazing feeling, but unfortunately it didn't last for very long. When I looked down, the sight that I saw horrified me.

While the outside of the suit had been removed, the endoskeleton that had been inside of the suit was gruesomely stuck into my chest, leaving the entire front of my uniform caked in a layer of dried blood. The metal was weirdly deformed as it curved around to the back of the costume, leaving the whole thing thoroughly embedded into my flesh. I was suddenly very thankful for the fact that I had passed out when I was first stuffed inside of the costume.

Next, he began cutting the face mask off. I could tell that he was trying to be more careful with this part because he was going slower than molasses in January that's really indecisive about where it wants to go. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the front of the mask fell off and landed on the ground with a satisfying "thud". I breathed in fresh air for the first time in over a week, and my ears were uncovered enough that I could hear my saviour softly whisper;

"Miles, it's him."


	21. The Interview

The first thing I noticed when I got out of the suit was how badly I smelled. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the entire building probably smelled like used kitty litter for the entire time I was there. I asked if my rented room had been given to someone else by now, and Miles (who turned out to be the police chief like I thought he was) told me that it had been part of the investigation to find me after I went missing, so no one had gone into the room except the police. Matt, the one who cut me out of the suit, wanted me to tell him everything about how I had been trapped, but I told him it would have to wait until after I had had a well deserved shower.

When I got to the house where I was staying at, my room was strangely untouched. The police investigation must have mostly taken place at Freddy's, I guess. I peeled off my week-old clothes and jumped in the shower, feeling the water on my skin (as well as the bandages around my chest from where the endoskeleton had been pulled out). It was one of the best feelings I have ever felt, being finally clean after having been stuck in a sweaty costume for nine days. After getting out of the shower, I felt like a whole new person. For the first time since I was trapped in that cloth prison, I finally felt free.

As I began putting on fresh clothes, however, the feeling quickly began to fade. In the back of my mind, I knew it wasn't true. I wasn't done yet. Mike was still in there, and I had promised myself that I would get him returned to the outside world. "_You could always just leave him behind_", said a voice from somewhere in the room, "_after all, he's already dead. What good would getting him out now do?_" I looked around the room frantically for the source of the voice, but could find nothing. Finally, I stopped. "I made a promise." I said simply, then popped a pill into my mouth and swallowed.

* * *

><p>The walk back to the police station was fairly uneventful. The snow had mostly stopped falling, and was now merely a light sprinkle now and then. The blizzard had left everything in sight covered in a thick layer of the stuff, and it was clear that the cars in the neighborhood wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon. The snow crunched underfoot as I walked up the door to the police station and stepped inside.<p>

When I entered, I was greeted by Matt sitting in a chair in the main lobby, anxiously writing things down in a small notebook. He perked up when I entered, and motioned for me to sit down in a chair opposite to him.

"So," he said, replacing the smaller notebook with a much larger one, "where have you been all this time? Why were you stuck in a rabbit costume when the police found you? I want to know everything."

"Well," I began, "I was working as a security guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, and the animatronics were set to a free-roaming mode every night."

Matt began furiously writing down what I said before asking me to continue.

I told him all about what had happened in the past nine days: how the animatronics had stuffed me into the suit, how I had spent my time with Mike playing Connect-Four in the basement, and how I had escaped by pretending to be broken so that the staff would shut down the suit. He listened intently during the whole thing, jotting down everything I said in his notebook. When I got to the part about my escape, however, he leaned in closely and asked the one question I was hoping he wouldn't ask.

"So, if you escaped, then where is Mike now?"

And there it was, the most difficult part of my story to tell. I had been dreading that question for the entire interview. I paused for a moment before finally deciding to tell him the truth.

"Mike is... dead. During my escape, the animatronics must have recognized him as a duplicate, and the other Freddy that was active that night came up to him and... well... ripped his head off."

He stared at me, mouth wide open, before finally sputtering out a response.

"They... they ripped his head off?"

"Yes. They did."

He stared at me some more, then practically yelled out, "that's insane! The robots actually killed someone, with a security guard watching on the cameras, and nobody did anything about it?! How could this be allowed to happen? We should be shutting down the whole restaurant for this!"

He looked at me wild-eyed, then slowly calmed down enough to whisper,

"I'm getting Miles on this. We're going to bring this whole company down."


	22. The Investigation

The next day the story of my escape was plastered all over the front page of the local newspaper. "Missing Security Guard Found in Snow Bank Dressed as Easter Bunny!" read the headline. The rest of the story wasn't much better, since all it really talked about was how great things were now that the search was finally over. Evidently the full details of the story hadn't quite gotten around to the media yet.

I don't care, though. I'll be happy as long as I can get Mike out of there and never have to see that restaurant again. They can say I was dressed as Santa and wearing a moose on my head for all I care.

I'm really surprised that they didn't get the details right, though. I told Matt about everything that happened, and I could've sworn he was from the newspaper. The way he looked, the way he acted, everything about him just screamed "reporter". You can't judge a book by its cover, I guess.

At least I was right about Miles being the police chief. He said that he would begin a full investigation of what happened at the restaurant immediately. Apparently he eats there all the time, so he should have no problem finding his way around the place. The annoying thing about the investigation, though, is all the publicity that it's been getting. Matt wasn't kidding when he said the search had been as much about the media as it had been the searching! It's been getting to the point where I can't go outside without being stopped by at least seven reporters who've been camped outside my door waiting for me. Honestly, I just want to be left alone right now. I need some time alone to think, and the constant barrage of questions isn't helping.

* * *

><p>I finally made it to the police station after fifteen minutes of question avoiding. I could've been there in five minutes if people had actually listened when I said that I didn't want to talk. They all went away when I got there, though, after Miles gave them one of the meanest glares I have ever seen. I mean, most people can pull off a decent glare when they're angry, but this was a whole new level of intimidating, like he practiced his scowls in the mirror every night before going to bed. It probably helps to be a cop and have a gun with you.<p>

* * *

><p>The investigation has hit a bit of a rough patch. Apparently, since the police need a warrant to actually search the basement, they can't do anything until a case is made against the company. And since they technically haven't committed any crimes, aside from possible health code violations, we're all out of luck. Matt didn't take the news so well when I told him.<p>

"What do you mean they haven't committed a crime? Someone died because they were too stupid to make sure their robots wouldn't try to kill anyone!" He said angrily, voice growing louder with every word, "we should be putting them on trial for murder, or at the very least for extreme negligence!"

"Look, Matt, I'm sure the police would be able to get a warrant if they had more evidence that Freddy Fazbear's Pizza was the one at fault. If we would just-"

"No, we have enough evidence! The problem is that they're hiding all of it in the basement so that they won't be found out for the dirty criminals that they are!"

"And how are we supposed to get that evidence? I doubt they'll let us just walk right into the basement to find something to arrest them with."

"Oh, finding the evidence won't be hard," He said, voice lowering back down to normal, "we just have to do it without getting caught."


	23. The Evidence

"Matt, we can't just walk in there! They have a security guard in there whose sole job is to stop people trying to sneak in!" I said, trying to convince him that what he was planning to do was a terrible idea that could very easily get both of us killed, "Plus, there's killer robots in there! We can't go in there without at least having a decent plan!"

Matt smiled deviously. It was the sort of smile that could convince you to do anything, that whatever crazy idea he had in mind would somehow work out for the best no matter what.

"That's just it though. The guard and the robots will be distracted by each other, so if we go in the middle of the night we'll be able to avoid everything."

"What if the robots decide to kill us? They seem to have no problem stuffing the security guards into suits, and the guards are protected by giant steel doors! Why wouldn't they go after us?"

"Because they're slow. Those robots were able to get to the security guards because the guards were stuck in an office; we'll be through the dining area before they even know what happened. Once we make it to the backstage room we just type in the code to the basement, take some pictures of all the dead bodies you said were down there, and then get out of there. Easy as pie."

I had to admit, he had a point. The robots never did seem to move very fast at all. Then again, that didn't stop _them_ from killing Mike. Wait, Mike... This might be our chance to get him out of there! The police couldn't ignore a dead body being found, and Mike was a security guard before he was brought down there! Along with all the other bodies down there, it would make a pretty convincing case that the restaurant was involved in some questionable stuff. There was only one way to be sure of anything, though.

"Let's do it." I said, trying to hide the fact that I would rather shake hands with a wood chipper than go back into that restaurant.

* * *

><p>When we got to the restaurant it was late at night, and the only light was coming from a dim street lamp across the street. I hesitated for a second, then handed Matt the key to the front door that I had taken on the night of my escape. He slowly turned the key in the lock, then opened the door with a creak. When the small door was fully opened, I stepped through into the darkness inside, with Matt following closely behind.<p>

"You've got the camera, right?" He asked as he started to close the door behind him.

"Right here." I said, pointing to the small device slung around my shoulder by a black cord.

"Good."

He removed the key from the lock with a "click" and shut the door completely.

* * *

><p>Once the door was closed, we finally realized how dark it was inside of the restaurant. The only light before had been from the soft glow of the street lamp, but now that the door was closed we had no light whatsoever. Luckily we had prepared for this, and flicked on the flashlights we had packed earlier.<p>

"The backstage area is on the other side of the dining room." I told Matt, "We'll have to make a run for it and hope that it's too early for any of the animatronics to be there yet."

He nodded in return and grabbed a small device out of his pocket. After fiddling with it for a bit, he gave me the signal to start running, and we both sprinted for the other side of the room.

The sprint across the room was much easier than I thought it would be. To be honest, I expected to have to dodge and weave through a crowd of animatronics, with the slightest misstep spelling certain death. However, not a single animatronic stood in our way as we ran to the door marked "employees only." When we got there, a quick glance out the door revealed three pairs of eyes staring back at us from the stage, which disappeared from sight as Matt closed the door behind him.

"So, you remember the code, right?" He asked, walking over to the shiny keypad on the side of the basement door.

"Of course." I replied, "It's '72414,' unless they've changed it since last week."

He typed in the code and, sure enough, the keypad beeped and the lock opened. As I walked through the door and into the basement once again, I saw the strange yellow bear from earlier appear out of the corner of my eye before vanishing once more.

* * *

><p>The smell of the basement was something that I was not prepared for. The unmistakable stench of death filled the air as I walked further into its depths. I tried holding my nose shut to block it out, but the air still tasted like decomposing flesh. Matt didn't fair much better, as he gagged and coughed a few times before getting used to the smell enough to even try to walk into the basement.<p>

The cause of the smell was made clear once we reached the bottom of the stairs. There, still lying on the floor, was Mike's body, surrounded by a cloud of angrily buzzing flies.

"Take a picture." Matt said, clearly talking with his fingers covering his nose. I silently agreed, taking the camera from around my neck and snapping a picture before quickly covering my nose again. Then I took a deep breath, held it, and quickly ran past Mike's body. Matt seemed to catch onto what I was doing, and soon ran past using the same method. Once on the other side of the room he let out a long, low whistle, the kind of sound you would make when passing a particularly nasty car accident.

The far wall of the room had empty costumes lined up all along the side of it. But I knew that the costumes weren't empty at all, they were filled with the bodies of the people who had been stuffed into them over the many years that the restaurant had been in operation. I stood there in realization, horrified by the full scope of everything that the animatronics had done, then slowly, silently, brought the camera up to eye level and took a picture.

The rest of the time in the basement was fairly uneventful. I had the idea to go around checking the suits to see if anyone was alive inside of them, but we found no survivors. Other than the suits we found little of interest, although I did manage to take a picture of my winning connect-four game against Mike. Eventually we decided that we had enough incriminating evidence against the restaurant and headed back to the backstage area.

"David?" Said Matt, closing the door to the basement and reactivating the keypad, "Let's never go down there again."

I wholeheartedly agreed. Any more time spent in that foul place would be too much as far as I was concerned. He walked over to the door leading to the dining room and opened it, giving the signal to run as he did. I took off running, only slowing down briefly to look at the two eyes watching me from the stage. Once again the animatronics were strangely absent, the only sound being a small, short crackling sound coming from behind me. As I reached the front door I threw my hand onto the handle, practically flying through the doorway as I exited the restaurant.

"Well, I guess the run wasn't the hard part after all." I said, panting and trying to catch my breath. There was no response. I turned my head, expecting Matt to be sitting next to me.

When I looked, however, he was nowhere to be found.

* * *

><p><em>AN: All right everyone, grab some popcorn and get comfortable, because this update note is gonna be a long one._

_First off, the reason why I've been taking so long to write lately is because I've started proofreading other peoples' stories. It turns out that reading stories and correcting them and doing all that jazz takes a heck of a lot of time, so updates might not be as frequent as I would like them to be. Don't worry though, I haven't given up on this story._

_Secondly, I'm writing another story! Those of you following my profile probably already know this, but I am currently writing a story called "In Light of Recent Events" in addition to this one. Right now it's just a side project, although I'll probably start writing for it a lot more often once I'm done with Those Who Survive._

_Thirdly, I am now accepting cover art for either this story or In Light of Recent Events because, let's face it, the cover is kind of boring. I know this might be a longshot, but if you would be willing to draw some new artwork for either of my stories, I would really appreciate it._

_Finally, I would like to thank everyone following this story for helping me reach 85 followers! I seriously did not think that I would ever make it this far, and I'm probably going to freak out if I get to 100. Seriously, I will film my reaction and put it on YouTube if I do._


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